agency

plural agencies

1. countableuncountableThe capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.

   A few advances there are in the following papers tending to assert the superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world.

   1695, John Woodward, “(please specify the page)”, in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: And Terrestrial Bodies, Especially Minerals: […], London: […] Ric[hard] Wilkin […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   Because structure in this argument means institutions— pregiven norms, values, beliefs, and practices— it is open-textured, incomplete, cannot guarantee its own applications, therefore, all behavior is action, has agency (Garfinkel 1964; Strauss et al. 1963).

   2018, Morris Zelditch, Status, Power, and Legitimacy, page 65

   Synonyms: action, activity, operation

2. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

   moral agency

   5 more examples

   individual agency

   Formally, capitalism performs its fundamental gesture—reappropriation without transformation. This bears on the question of subjective agency because this “reappropriation without transformation” is exactly what agency seeks to avoid; such a process indicates, in fact, that one's agency has failed, that one really had no agency in the first place.

   2001, Todd McGowan, The Feminine "No!", SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 105

   Strictly speaking, at the level of personal agency one could say that power is a condition where one is “enabled.” I would contend that this is a condition of personal agency.

   2012, Edmund V. Sullivan, A Critical Psychology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 75

   The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.

   2013, Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein, Tillmann Vierkant, Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 112

   SCP-3125 incarnated the following winter. Its first act upon its arrival — or, depending on the degree of intelligent agency you ascribed to it, the first side-effect of its arrival — was the neutralisation of the Foundation.

   2019 August 26, qntm, “Unthreaded”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 161

3. countableuncountableA medium through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.

   Synonyms: instrumentality, means

4. countableuncountableThe office or function of an agent; also, the relationship between a principal and that person's agent.

   authority of agency

5. countableuncountableAn establishment engaged in doing business for another; also, the place of business or the district of such an agency.

   As an employment agency you have a responsibility to supply work to the individual agency worker, as well as a service to the client.

   2012, Simon Toms, The Impact of the UK Temporary Employment Industry in Assisting Agency Workers since the Year 2000, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 277

   Synonyms: management

6. countableuncountableA department or other administrative unit of a government; also, the office or headquarters of, or the district administered by, such unit of government.

   Central Intelligence Agency

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   Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

   Synonyms: organ, service

1. A place in the United States:
   1. A minor city and township in Wapello County, Iowa.
   2. A township in Osage County, Kansas.
   3. A village and township in Buchanan County, Missouri.
   4. A township in Roberts County, South Dakota.